Meetings had started and Len Gibbons had bustled between them. He had contributed little but had taken brief notes. He had learned the requirement of his seniors and how it would be achieved. Matters had been moved forward at a location he could not picture and was marked in his mind only by a crude cross on a map, but that was immaterial to him. He could reflect, gazing at the featureless face and at the name in her bold handwriting, that the moment had brought him considerable satisfaction. The collection of a used cigarette end, smoked only a third down and tossed aside, had supplied the opportunity for the moment, had involved considerable resources, a budget allocation – all handled by Gibbons – and manpower deployment.

He told Sarah that the positioning of the sheet of paper on the wall was excellent, and almost smiled… The child molester from the al-Quds Brigade of the IRGC had said that the Engineer was a prolific smoker. That had been enough to determine Len Gibbons’s course of action in confirming the named target.

They had told Rashid and Naghmeh that the tumour inside her skull was now the size of a songbird’s egg. It cut across the nerve routes that controlled speech and mobility. Her condition had deteriorated over the previous weeks, with more intense pain in her head, increased dizziness, inability to move and great tiredness. She could no longer look after her children. The doctor in Ahvaz had realised the importance of her husband and had pulled strings to raise funds for the couple to fly to Tehran for more detailed scans and biopsies. They had stayed two nights at the medical school attached to the university. Rashid Armajan could not fault the treatment and respect they were shown: an official car had met them at the airport to drive them to their accommodation and had been available to take them back for the return flight. They had sat numbed and silent on the aircraft. The enormity of what they had been told had cudgelled them.